


The Window in the Painting

by silentflightfeathers



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Doctor - Freeform, F/M, NaNoWriMo, No Romance, Not really edited, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Somewhat ambiguous Doctor Shenanigans, Tenth Doctor Era, The Doctor gets stuck in art again, The Doctor on His Own, This is why the Doctor should not be allowed in Art Galleries, how did you even, how do you even 3rd dimension, unnamed Protagonist - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 14:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentflightfeathers/pseuds/silentflightfeathers
Summary: A girl goes to the Met on a date, and this proves to be a terrible, terrible, two-dimensional mistake.The Doctor tries to visit an art gallery, and this proves to be a terrible, terrible, two-dimensional mistake.





	The Window in the Painting

The girl banged and tugged at the windowsill that separated her lightwashed world from a world of dimensions and unpixelated clarity. “If I could  _ get this window open!” _

“Ahhh, the  _ eyes _ are the windows to the soul, my love.”

“... I will stab you  _ right in the face.” _

“So harsh, my vixen!”

“I’ll  _ vixen _ YOU in a minute,” she grumbled under her breath. The flickery, two-dimensional 19th century dandy maneuvered his face into a lovesick expression. “Go… be.. Over  _ there _ . Yes. Farther. Away, thank you.” That said, she reached out and banged on the glittery, washed-out window frame. “Oi! You! Yes, you, out in the real world! EY! Look over… here… ah fuck it.”

“Dost something vex thee, fair one? I shall fetch thee anything you wish.”

“Right now I’d like  _ thee _ to fetch  _ thyself _ away from my person, you fictive flickery jackass.” she growled. It was bad enough she was in a dress- yes, quite bad enough, in a poorly painted dress in a ridiculous painting by  _ one of the maaasters bleeblehbloo _ . If the bastard had been such a master he could have painted his subjects in proper damn clothing instead of flecks of light  _ suggesting _ clothing. She also had to contend with the  _ courting process.  _ Who needs a courting process in a Renoir anyway? All of his women appeared to be mocking their suitors. 

Oh.

Well, at least she was in character.

“Oi! Let me out!” She tried again. “Let! Me! Out!” She could  _ see _ the museum through the window. It was  _ right there. _

This really was turning out to be the number one worst date of all time. “Come on, babe, we’ll go to the museum, they have that Impressionist exhibition, you love Monet, blahblahblah…” Sure, Robert. Let’s go see the Impressionists and get  _ knocked into a painting. _

Really, how was this even possible. 

Maybe she’d actually been knocked into one of those abstract sculptures with all the corners. She wasn’t stuck in a Renoir, she was stuck in an E.R. and having hallucinations. Yes, that must be it. Hallucinations. The sculpture that was probably worth more than a year’s worth of rent for her overpriced flat was probably all crooked now, and the janitor would have an unpleasant mess to clean up later. That’s all. She just had to… wake up.

She pinched herself. Pinching yourself in two dimensions proved to be more difficult than expected.  Come on, this was supposed to work.  _ Pinch Pinch Pinch. Wake up! _

“Argh! Damnit!” She looked around. Turning her head proved to be an irritatingly new sensation. 

“You! Yes, you over there!”  The painting person in question was in what might be a brown coat… or a paper sack, it was difficult to tell. “Come here!”

“Hmm?” They sidled over to her. It was like watching a doll made out of ripped paper bags move on its own. “Oh, you’re a lively one, aren’t you?” He held up a little light stick that  _ mweep mweep’d _ at her. “Ohh. Oh dear. Well, this is a fine mess, innit?”

“Whatever. Listen, everyone in these paintings is supposed to be madly in love or some crap like that. So, I need you to kiss me.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and angled his head towards her. “... beg pardon?”

“Kiss me, stupid! I need to wake up! Kiss me so I can wake up out of the hallucination and not be a two-dimensional painting person anymore! I’m supposed to be on a date, not hallucinating in a hospital!”

He cleared his throat. How did he even have a throat to clear? “Miss, I don’t think that’s— mmf!”

She’d grabbed him by his stuffy brown coat and kissed him herself. If you want something done right…

She was still in a painting. “Argh!”

“Ah… Right. Well, now that you’ve got that out of your system, allow me to assure you that you are,  _ in fact _ , stuck in a painting. Isn’t that brilliant? A painting! Come along, come along, let’s have a look about, yeah?”

“NO. It is NOT brill— where are you going? Get back here! Hey- you!  Who even are you?! Why am I stuck in a painting?!” She picked up her light-skirt and chased after him. 

“Oh, so sorry. I’m the Doctor! Come along, don’t want to miss anything, do we? No, of course not. Where shall we go next?  It looks like a Rembrandt through that window, interesting fellow,” he scrunched his face, “bit stuffy. Maybe Picasso? I think there was a Picasso a few paintings back…” 

“Grrr!”

“You’re right, no Picasso. Took me  _ ages _ to find my nose again.” He hopped through a doorway and into another Renoir. “Hmm… maybe left?”

“Left?! What difference does it make when we’re in a painting?!”

He looked at her, his flickery face somehow conveying shock. “Wha—  it makes all the difference in the world! Ooh, what about a Caravaggio? Those Italians, eh?  _ Very _ naughty!”

She planted her two-dimensional feet and scowled at this…  _ Doctor. _

“Oh, no, you don’t want to make that face.”

“What! Why can’t I make this face! This is a perfectly reasonable face to make!”

“Wayeelll… it makes your eyes go all… fizzy.”

“Fizzy.”

“Yeah! Doesn’t really go with Holbein.”

“Holbein!”

“Yeah! You know? Fifteen hundreds, painted a few royals? Very detailed. Impressive fellow. You’ll like it, you get proper fingers! Ohh, that’s  _ very _ nice. See? Fingers!” He wiggled all eleven of his digits at her. “Oops, that one must be leftover from the Picasso… sorry, sorry.” He popped it off and stuck it in his pocket. “Won’t be needing  _ that. _ ”

She grabbed his arm with her suddenly useful again fingers. “Would. You. Hold. Still,” she huffed.

He stopped and looked at her expectantly as she attempted to catch her breath. (How did she even have LUNGS?) “Nope, no time, come on come on!”

Then he grabbed her hand and dragged her through painting after painting- became wildly allergic to pastoral Van Goghs, slogged through a huge wash of Monet’s lily pads, at one point got stuck in the  _ Nighthawks’ _ diner because there wasn’t a door… 

And crashed into his sharp, 2-d  back when he spotted just the tiniest flash of blue.

“Ah HA!” 

And they were off again, into another painting.

“It’s a police box.”

“It LOOKS like a police box.”

“... it’s a painting of a police box.”

“Aghh…” he patted the door of the police box. “Don’t you listen to her, darling,” he cooed to the police box. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

She gritted her teeth. She was stuck running around in a museum full of paintings with a madman who talked to fictional police boxes. “Fine.” She said, “what’s so special about  _ this _ police box?”

He took a key out of his pocket and wiggled it at her. “ _ This _ is not a police box.” He said. “ _ This _ is a TARDIS.”

“...A what?”

He turned and slotted the key into the lock. “Time and Relative Dimension In Space. TARDIS!” Then he swung the door open with a grand and imperious gesture, a King inviting the lowly peasant into his throne room.

She peeked in. “I see we made it to the Science Fiction wing,” she observed.

“Wot? Nahhh. Come on.” 

She stepped over the threshold. There was a  _ stretching _ feel, and a  _ plip _ … and then she had a nose again. She patted her face, her arms, her butt… “Oh! Oh god, oh god I have a third dimension, ohhh thank heavens my face moves like a face I’ll never take the z axis for granted ever again I swear…”

The Doctor waited for a minute, shrugged, and walked to the large console in the center of the room. He pursed his lips, fiddled with a dial, tapped one of the screens, and flicked a few glances at her before clearing his throat.

She stopped petting herself and looked at him. “What?”

“Ohh.. nothing. Just… most people ah…” He waved his arms.  “Walk into a room like this one… and might… have… something to say…? Agh, never mind.” He shrugged and turned back to his control panel. “Hey, go pull that lever over there. Yeah, yeah, that one. Now turn that dial two clicks to the left… your other left. Yes. There.” He lifted his foot up and nudged a button halfway ‘round the console. “Now… hold…. On!”

ZWOMPH.

She was suddenly on the floor. “Ow.”

He popped into her field of view like a demented, trenchcoat-wearing jack-in-the-box. “WOW! What a LANDING!” He took her by the shoulders and popped her back on her feet. “There we are! All better, nothing’s broken, everything’s in the right place.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and his face froze. “Except for that… well! Wasn’t that a charming little adventure?” He hustled her back towards the double doors. Off you go! Off to be with your… Brandon or Bob or Logan or whatever… have a  _ lovely _ night, wonderful to meet you, et cetera et cetera, ta ta!”

“Wait! But what just… how did…”

“Oh, I was just off on the coordinates just a  _ tiny _ bit… aaand out you go!” He pushed her past the doors and into a perfectly normal corridor of the museum. “It was a pleasure meeting you!” He chirped, with his eyebrows raised and his teeth showing the same way she hustled unwanted solicitors off of her doorstep, and slammed the blue police box doors in her face.

“Hey!” She pounded on the doors. “What the hell just happened!”

He popped his head back out. “Good _ bye,” _ he said, and closed the door again. She pounded on the doors for a few more seconds, but the blue police box that really was  _ much _ bigger on the inside began to make an awful cyclic screeching noise... And flash in and out of existence… and she backed away with her hands in the air as it faded completely.

“Right,” she said to herself. “I’ve gone mad. A weird little man in a trenchcoat just rescued me from a painting and disappeared in a funny blue box.”

Footsteps ran down the hallway. “Jessica?! Jess! Oh thank god, where did you go? I turned around and you just disappeared!”

“I… I… I was…”

“Did you get lost? The restrooms were on the ground floor… do you have paint on your nose?”

Jessica swiped at her nose. “Uh… makeup smear! Allergies… heh...”

“Sure. Hey, why don’t we get out of here? I’m kind of tired of looking at paintings.”

She side-eyed the end of the corridor that used to have a blue police box. “I am  _ so _ tired of paintings,” she agreed. “Ice cream sounds  _ much _ better.”


End file.
